Not Personal, Not Impersonal

Out of control?

A lot of people are clamoring for gun control in America at the moment, but there is an important statistic that should be remembered in all of this. And it boils down to these two facts

1) More people own guns per capita in Canada than in America.

2) Far more people get killed in America per capita by guns.

Now, Canada does have tighter controls on who they let have guns than America does and certainly I agree that these controls should be implemented in America. But we all know that implementing them will be very difficult and still doesn’t mean less guns.The base of the problem is cultural clearly. Something in the culture tells them that this is a way to deal with life.

What always happens in these situations in America is that the politicos go constitutional on everyone’s ass. The democrats call for gun control and the republicans sensing they can’t win the debate say that it was because of some movie / album / video game thus making it about freedom of speech. We’ve been there, done that got the “out of my fucking cold dead hands” tee shirt.

The solution has got to be outside the box. We have to do something that seems really crazy. More guns in schools. Woah there Alex what are you saying, like armed guards and stuff? No. People who think they have guns to defend themselves are part of the problem. We need to teach kids about guns and about how dangerous they are. Teach them that owning a gun makes you more likely to die in a gun crime rather than less. Teach them that killing others doesn’t help you feel better (I guess it can’t or why do they all kill themselves at the end)? It’s all about education.

But we’ve been there with education you’re all saying. Look how long we’ve been trying to make sex education a reality. Well yes so we have to trade something with the gun lobby. What we have to give them is, something so tasty they’ll just never see the punch coming. We make buying weaponry tax deductible.

What?

Yes tax deductible.

Why is this good? Well first we get to know where all the guns are. That’s one of the best bits.

Then we make it so that if you claim this benefit you have to allow the government to inspect how you keep them safely on your premises.

We should make it so there are two different rates of tax relief one for hunting weaponry and one for non hunting weaponry. So that later we can ban all not hunting weaponry rather than having to debate each time if certain guns are dangerous or not. Like we should really have to ask this question.

Finally we fix it so that the gun shop carries a large part of the tax burden if the individual fails to keep their gun securely. This way it is in the shops interest to check out their customer.

With all this we aren’t forcing registration, we’re not changing the constitution. We’re just saying, “oooh wouldn’t this tax break be nice”. And people will gladly trade in their liberties for money.

Now you may say that this will simply drive the trade underground. That bad guys will still need to get their guns from somewhere. But most guns are stolen from people. Not bought from distributors wholesale. If people are encouraged to keep them more safe then perhaps students won’t be able to get hold of them at least, and criminals will certainly find it harder too.